if they all get the same idea becomes unstoppable. >> host: do you have your approval? >> guest: i have never asked my peers for their approval. >> host: why not? >> guest: i don't care. >> host: what would you like your legacy to be when it comes to what your work over the years has created? >> whatever it is it's going to be, i won't be here to know it so it really doesn't concern me that much. >> host: do you like doing television interviews? >> guest: sometimes. i wouldn't want to put a percentage on it. >> host: how well did you know milton friedman? >> guest: i was a student of his at one time. of course he was the reason that i was brought to the hoover institution with a book called knowledge and decisions. really one of the fine human beings.

i often say if you were to ask me someone who has genius and common sense i was a milton friedman and then i would have to struggle to find another example. >> host: we have been talking this dr. thomas sowell at stanford university and here's his most recent book, "intellectuals and race". this is booktv on c-span2.

husk of the chief correspondent of the "washington post" has a new book out on the 2012 election, collision 2012. dan balz why do you so where

coalition? >> guest: i thought this election was a collision between a lot of things that collision between the americas the america that elected president of bombing 2008 and the america that elected the republicans to take control of the house in 2010. there was a collision of philosophies, of ideology and really a collision between two quite different personalities and people in president obama governor romney. if you think about where each of them came from, they could have been more different. >> host: was there a point when the winner of the collision could have been? >> guest: well you can argue a year out the president was very vulnerable. in large part to cut as it was not clear what was going to happen with the economy. as we played out the election to things. one, think of presidents camp and was more skillful and more effective both in the consistency and the shaping of its message and also just in the

sort of its organization and get out the vote operation in many of the things they did with technology. having said that, i think by the end of the campaign the deck was fairly well stacked against romney. it would have been a very heavy lift for him to be able to defeat the president in the end. >> host: was a significant that barack obama didn't get as many votes in 2012 as he got in 2000 a? >> guest: very significant. you have to go back to the 19th century to find a president who was reelected with a smaller percentage of the vote then when he was first elected. so i think what it said was that that -- my notion was 2008 was a historic campaign for all the reasons we know and there was i think a feeling that the country might be able to move past it period a very divisive politics, and we saw in the subsequent four years that was not the case in many ways we were more

divided and by 2012, you know i think those divisions were so clear that it was going to be much more difficult for the president to achieve the high watermark that he had gotten in 2008. >> host: is did mitt romney participate or were you able to interview for collision 2012? >> guest: i was in surprisingly so. i've said two of the people that it's not often a losing candidate wants to sit down with the reporter or a book author who basically wants to ask a lot of questions of why didn't you do this and why did you do this thing and why didn't you think of that? he was quite gracious. we spent 90 minutes together just the two of us. he answered all of my questions in that amount of time. he was i thought quite forthcoming in most of the areas. there were still a couple of things that he was still i guess i would say processing after the election. one in particular was the 47%

comment that surfaced in september of 2012. i think he still is coming to term with exactly what he had said. >> host: what is one of the thing people will learn by reading collision 2012? >> guest: one thing they won't learn if some of the doubts that governor romney had at the very early stage before he formally announced whether he was the right candidate. i think they will learn how competitive president obama is and how he was prepared to run in essence a totally different kind of campaign in 2012 then he ran in 2008 and i think the other thing that people will take away from this is the degree to which 2012 gave us a window into the politics of the future. >> host: dan balz is the chief correspondent for the "washington post" and his most recent book collision 2012. you are watching but tv on c-span2. >> george washington had those

numbers problem and experience problem. i believe 9000 troops and a fellow pointy at 3000 troops. after this the success that unhcr hillam the british said a few on bass and we will give you boston. they go to candidate to regroup in washington says i know exactly when they're coming back so they come back to new york city and he knows he can't face them. he knows he can't beat them head-to-head so he's got to use espionage. his gutsy is guerrilla warfare. he's got to be able to anticipate them so it's only logical well, he needs a spy. he needs his own cia and then you find out he has this huge espionage background. he is a noted guy from the french indian war. he went out of his way to brush up on those skills so he tells talmage and others in general scott hey regular general scott this is what we are going to need to do. we have to find these people to help me out.

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>> now our booktv from the 13th annual national book festival on the national mall in washington d.c. pulitzer prize-winning historian rick atkinson presents his book "the guns at last light" the war in western europe 1944-45. >> and now to our author and our speaker, rick atkinson. rick served as a reporter foreign correspondent and senior editor of the "washington post" for 25 years. it's my personal misfortune that i arrived too late as opposed to work with them. he is rightly regarded as one of the most distinguished journalists of our time. his talent as a writer and a reporter and his unparalleled expertise in military affair